


Tidal Walk

by gwendee



Category: Assassination Classroom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fantasy, Fluff and Humor, Gen, High School, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Magical Realism, Mentions of Myth & Folklore, Mild Angst, Nymphs & Dryads, Post-Canon, Supernatural Elements, The Moon - Freeform, Vampires, Water Spirit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:02:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24111748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwendee/pseuds/gwendee
Summary: the endless infinity of water cycles; lack thereof“Folk are panicking,” Gakushuu says. “There was buzz when part of the moon blew up, but it was still there. It’d be much more serious if it was all gone.”Or: Vampire Karma and Water Spirit (Nymph) Gakushuu, in a little bit more.
Relationships: Akabane Karma/Asano Gakushuu
Comments: 46
Kudos: 168





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [3 Times Asano Gakuhou Was Curious + 1 Thing He Really Didn’t Want To Know About](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23363026) by [plumstagram](https://archiveofourown.org/users/plumstagram/pseuds/plumstagram). 
  * Inspired by [Jettison](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19846147) by [gwendee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwendee/pseuds/gwendee). 



> I've been in a melancholy mood recently. 
> 
> A while back I read "3 Times Asano Gakuhou Was Curious + 1 Thing He Really Didn’t Want To Know About" by plumstagram. And i loved it! I thought about it and decided to write more for this AU. I made a little big of a deal on how the moon affected Gakushuu in my first fic, and in assclass canon the moon was supposed to, well, eventually disappear into the air. What do you think will happen?
> 
> I wouldn't exactly call this fic a direct sequel to Plum's work or my first fic "Jettison" because there are slight changes (?) One of which has Ikeda being "alive". I had him dead in Jettison but Plum brought him back in their fic, and I loved that so he's here to stay! The premise remains the same, of course, with Water Nymph Gakushuu and Vampire Karma! I would recommend reading the earlier two fics because otherwise this would be really confusing. Both fics are currently linked in the inspired-by section.
> 
> Disclaimer: I know absolutely jack about supernatural beings and/or related issues, whatever I have written in this fic is either made up, pulled from the first search headline off google, or based off my general knowledge of what I think makes sense.

**Tidal Walk**

_the endless infinity of water cycles; lack thereof_

**.----**

“There’s something wrong,” Gakushuu says, head tilted to the sky. 

It’s raining. 

He’s soaked to the bone, white uniform clinging to his skin, haze of the storm making the lines blur so finely it almost looks like Gakushuu is part of the rain.  His voice carries over, slightly distorted with the rumbling of the torrents in the background. Karma’s over by the veranda, staying dry, a notepad in his hands. He picks it up anyways, and he’s sure the words would have been lost in the noise to anyone else.

“What is?” 

“I don’t know,” Gakushuu murmurs. 

Karma looks back down at his notepad, his chicken scratch all over the page. He’s not a fan of writing notes in graphite, but he’s doing more cancellations as of late, so he finally succumbed and bought a box of pencils and a good eraser. Over a faint smudge of what used to be the word “fake” he amends “maybe,” frowns, and striked it through. Then remembers he has an eraser.

To Gakushuu he calls out, “has anyone ever seen a unicorn?”

“I don’t know,” Gakushuu says.

Gakushuu’s new to this fantasy urban setting they’ve both found themselves entwined in. What he knows is limited to what the river girls know, plus his own bit of digging, but he doesn’t have expertise outside his little niche. If unicorns were real, they’d be hidden deep in the forest alcoves that city magical folk can’t find.

Karma’d like to explore the world one day, he thinks. He’s going to have plenty of time. 

He folds the notepad back into his bag - waterproof. Many of his belongings are waterproof now.

When he looks back up, Gakushuu is gone. Karma blinks and he's standing there again, still in the middle of a downpour. He's not smiling - or at least Karma doesn't think he is - but there's an almost serene look on his face. Gakushuu's moods are regulated by the weather and he's calmer on wet days like this, it's kind of cute. (On the flip side, Gakushuu is absolutely irritable in the dry weather.)

(It's because it takes so much more energy to keep everything running the way it should, especially with the dead dry air trying to jab into your skin, My'ra tells him. She's sunning on a warm rock by the riverbank as she tells him this, one slender leg dipped into the water. "He'll feel better with more water around. Keeps everything… regulated. Do you have a pond?" 

"I won't be able to cart an entire pond around," Karma says. "We move a lot. At school." 

"Is there a pond then? At school?" 

"Well, yes," Karma says. "But we can't be there all the time. And we aren't allowed to, uhm, swim in it." 

"Then what the bloody hell is the pond for, then?!")

The storm lasts into the evening, by which time Gakushuu is back on the veranda. As much as he wants to be elsewhere (five feet to the left, in the middle of a thunderstorm), schoolwork takes priority and is not waterproof. They work in silence, or Karma thinks they work in silence, until he has Gakushuu tapping on his shoulder to realize he's been trying to get Karma's attention for the past five minutes. 

(Karma has hearing aids on recommendation. He'd made the acquaintance of a vampire is 62 who looks 26, in the midst of the world tour Karma's already planning for. He doesn't want to look 17 forever and she'd let him know there are ways around that, just before promptly kicking Karma out of her apartment. He'd interrupted her in her sleep, because there was a small pocket of free time he had after school and before his high-maintenance commitments (read: Gakushuu) that meant he was knocking on her door at 3. 23 pm. 

Alesha hadn't been happy. They've made better arrangements for next Sunday. 

Generously enough she'd shoved a little box into Karma's hands before slamming the door in his face, hence the hearing aids. They're terrifyingly poorly made - broken, likely - which made them perfect. Without them he heard raindrops after raindrops after raindrops, the low croak of a frog in a mud puddle twenty feet away, Gakushuu's low steady breathing in the middle of a thunderstorm… with those on, he hears jack. It's blissful.) 

Karma pulls out the hearing aids. "Yeah?" 

"I'm texting Ria and Taka," Gakushuu says insistently. "They feel it too."

"What?" 

"Something is wrong," Gakushuu says. 

"I don't feel it," Karma says. 

Gakushuu frowns at him almost disappointingly like there's something Karma's just not getting.

"Oh," Karma says. Ria's a werewolf, Taka's a witch. There's not a lot the trio have in common. "The moon?"

"Think so," Gakushuu says. "Ria's senses are going haywire. Taka's charts and readings are off."

Karma pulls out his phone. "I'll ask Ritsu."

Gakushuu leans on his shoulder. He's lax in the weather. 

"Ritsu, do you have information on the moon?" 

Ritsu's avatar is bright and pixellated, casting a soft glow on their faces. Ironically that hardens the edges of Gakushuu's face. "There is a moon festival coming up soon, but you're not asking about that. The space station's been logging unusual seismic activity on the moon. It's unstable. They think it's going to collapse on itself." 

Gakushuu's eyes widen. 

"Don't go telling people about it, you two," Ritsu warns, good naturedly. "This information is illegal." 

"Oh!" Gakushuu says. "Sorry. I have to." 

Ritsu frowns at him. "Asano." 

"Strictly magical only," Gakushuu promises her. "We are feeling the repercussions already."

"Oh, oh!" Ritsu says. "I'm sorry. I'll keep you updated in that case. Stay well." 

Karma looks at Gakushuu. “What are your plans?

Gakushuu’s frowning. “Let’s go get the river girls.”

**..---**

The River girls are 5, 6, 7 or 8 depending on the season and time of day you catch them. Ikeda’s here more often than not, because he doesn’t have anywhere else to go. He’s here today too, hands halfway in Shal’ll’s hair. He’s twisting a braid.

On a good day Kalasi can be seen out and about, but Karma usually doesn’t hedge much on being able to catch her. She’s here today, strangely enough, despite the after-rain sun beating down on them. She stares at Karma with narrowed eyes.

“Hi, Red-red,” Mr’ya says.

“Hi, Mir-mir.” Karma can’t pronounce any of their names. Sometime a few months ago they took pity on him for trying.

“Hi Akabane,” Ikeda says mildly. “Shuu.”

“Riku,” Gakushuu says. 

“Well?” Kalasi demands. “Something is wrong. What is wrong?”

Karma wonders what they’re feeling. With the current influence the moon has on tides and the water, what would happen if it is gone? 

“The moon is collapsing on itself,” Gakushuu says. “It’s unstable.”

“Fix it,” Kalasi says. 

In a world with magic, science is eluding. There’s not much that most science can do to explain old laws. Kalasi is older than the river itself; why she’s here, none of them really know. She’s come by the crack on the riverbed that trickles down to the ocean, upwards. Technology doesn’t do well in water, so she’s hardly interacted with it.  To her, magic is her science, and science is her magic.

“That’s not how it works,” Gakushuu says.

Kalasi scowls at him.

The braid comes undone in Ikeda’s hand, falling through his fingers like sheets of water. Ikeda looks disgruntled. Shal’ll is there in the next blink, her cold hands pressing to Karma’s cold face. “What do you see?” She says. “What do you see?”

“The moon,” Karma immediately says. “Ah, nothing.”

“What does he see?” Gakushuu asks.

“He sees what happened to the moon,” Shal’ll says. “He sees. What happened to the moon?”

“It was blown up,” Karma says. “By a rat. Uh, a science experiment. It was blown up with antimatter.”

Shal’ll makes a series of high clicking sounds. “She wants to see you,” she says almost eagerly. “She wants to see you.”

“Who?”

She makes the same series of sounds. Was that a name?

“He’ll drown,” Gakushuu says.

“Hold onto him, hold onto him,” Shal’ll tells him.

“Who?” Karma repeats.

Gakushuu repeats the trilling noises.

Karma scowls at him.

“Karma can’t,” Gakushuu says, louder. “He’ll drown.”

“You tell her then, on his behalf,” Shal’ll says. “You. On his behalf. Tell her then, she wants to know what happened to the moon. She wants to know-”

“I will,” Gakushuu says quickly. “Karma, go home.” He pushes his belongings into Karma’s hands and jumps into the water. He's left staring after Gakushuu, befuddlement on his face.

“Our mother,” Ikeda offers. “There’s no anglicized form of her name.” 

Nymphs are predominantly female, and they run on a matriarchy. Gakushuu and Ikeda are turned, thereby one of the only few male water nymphs. Mother is a loose term, especially when Gakushuu and Ikeda use it. They do because of courtesy, and because it'd be easier for everyone involved. 

Gakushuu told him about her once. She’d been there when the oceans first formed. The trills and chirps that are her name change with the seasons - moon phases, because so does she. Ouch.

“Oh,” Karma says. 

“Go home,” Ikeda says. 

**...--**

“There’s no point in remapping things now,” Taka says. “There are too many fluctuations.”

“How far off are your readings?” Karma says.

Taka frowns at him. “You were supposed to die yesterday. Are you dead?”

“Um,” Karma says. “Yes and no.”

“Very,” Taka says. 

“Shal’ll wanted him to meet (intelligible) yesterday,” Gakushuu says. 

“You should have brought him,” Taka says. “Then my readings would have been right.”

They sit in silence for a bit.

“Is it working?” Gakushuu says.

There’s a divination spell sigil drawn onto a flat river stone Gakushuu picked up yesterday. “No,” Taka says.

“Aw,” Gakushuu sounds disappointed. 

“I really hope the moon doesn’t collapse,” Taka says. “Many things rely on the lunar cycle.” He pauses. “Even tracking. My familiar won’t be able to find his way home.”

“Well we can’t fix the moon,” Karma says. He turns to Gakushuu. “Can we?”

“I certainly can’t,” Gakushuu says. 

"I bet the fey can," Taka says. 

Ah, the good old fey. For what little Karma knows about every magical folk, every other of said magical folk knows even less about the fey. 

"Probably," Gakushuu agrees. He stares unblinkingly at Taka. Taka stares back. 

"I told you, I'm not a changeling. My purple eyes are hereditary."

"Ugh," Taka says. "Maybe your dad is a changeling?"

"He is good with words," Karma agrees. "You, too, but to a lesser extent."

Gakushuu shoots him a glare. "Yeah, and I'm a changeling half-fey water nymph." 

"And male," Karma tacks on. 

“My father is not a changeling,” Gakushuu says loudly, chin tilted upwards. “Neither am I.”

“Sure,” Karma says. “Do you have grandparents?”

“Fuck you.”

(Gakuho was weird. He always looks at Karma like he’s trying too hard to solve a puzzle, and he looks at Gakushuu a little bit of something sad in his eyes, like he’s still trying to find something he knows he’d thrown out a long time ago. Maybe he knows, maybe he has a hunch. 

They’ve had many strange interactions before, and it always feels like they’re having separate conversations.

Maybe it’s Karma’s fault. He’d been angry that day, and it’d slipped out of his mouth before he had time to bite his tongue. “Gakushuu’s got his big brother Ikeda looking out for him.” The look Gakuho had given him was chilling. He’d turned tail out of there then, and he keeps a bit more of an ear out for any mention of it.

So far, there’s nothing. It’s been months now.)

“I think I would know if my own father is anything but unremarkably human,” Gakushuu says. He’s still on the same thread with Taka. 

Taka is insistent. “It’s the only lead we have!”

“It’s not a lead as much as it’s a red herring,” Gakushuu says, exasperated. 

“Guys,” Karma says. 

They turn to look at him.

“Ignoring the whole conspiracy theory on Gakuho being a fey - which if I’m being honest is kind of worth checking out - but we should focus.” 

“Karma keeping us on track,” Gakushuu teases.

“Oh shut up,” Karma says. He has his notepad out. “If we were supposed to find fey, where do we start?”

“A perfect fairy ring,” Taka says. “It cannot be centered around a tree or pole or anything of the sort. Magic must be present in the soil, and even then possibly only one out of thousands could hold a gateway open. It also runs a risk of, well, you never being able to return to this world again.”

“It’s not feasible,” Gakushuu says. 

Karma stares back down at his notepad, frowning.

“Oh, it’s raining again,” Taka says. He stands up to pull the curtains open. “It sure seems to be raining a lot recently.”

“Yeah,” Gakushuu says. He looks out into the storm, thinking, and Karma watches him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Chapter notes:**  
>  That's right, the story this time revolves around the moon. Will they fix the moon? How? Or will they let it crackle and disappear into nothingness as with canon Assclass? You know, I find it weird that there seemed to be insignificant repercussions in canon when Earth lost a whole ass moon. Like, doesn't the moon actually affect things like tides and animal behavior? Biologists everywhere are screaming. The moon-is-a-hologram theorists are also screaming, for a different reason. Werewolves are crying. 
> 
> I added a few more OCs - the river girls, Taka and Ria, and a vampire. It's okay if you don't want to keep track of them, they don't really do much. This story is mostly Gakushuu and Karma centered, they just need people to talk to. Some of the river girls' names were mentioned in Jettison, but some debut here. 
> 
> Ikeda is alive here! I heavily implied he drowned and was eaten up by the river girls in Jettison, but I mentioned in the front notes that Plumstagram's interpretation of the fic had him alive. And honestly? I liked that. I want Ikeda to be alive, so now he is.
> 
> I make references to Plum's fic here as well, especially regarding Gakuhou. If you remember, Gakuhou's assumptions regarding Karma and Gakushuu oscillated around "are they dating?" up until the point he eavesdropped on a conversation they were having, where they explicitly stated Gakushuu was dead. Does this fic occur after that, or in the timeframe of the fic? I don't know. It's up to your interpretation, and I'll most likely keep it open.


	2. Chapter 2

**....-**

“I’m baking,” Karma says. “Pumpkin spice cookies. Are you cold?”

Gakushuu runs cold. He’s bundled up in a scarf today. “No. Father thought I felt cold.”

Karma snorts. “You always are. He’d probably realize that if he paid attention.”

Gakushuu smiles under the wool. “I actually wish it’d stop raining so much. I want to get a little tan.”

“You want to- what?” Karma stares. “That’s not - why?”

“I’m so pale.”

“Right, I forgot you’re a literal diva with your looks. Get a spray tan.”

“Gross,” Gakushuu mutters. 

“Any progress about the magical folk?” Karma asks.

“Someone higher up leaked the information,” Gakushuu says. “I only told Taka. There’s widespread panic. There was buzz when part of the moon blew up, but it was still there. It’d be much more serious if it was all gone.”

“What’s so special about the moon anyways?” Karma says. “I mean, I know about the tides. The moon is just a hunk of rock, isn’t it?”

“There’s nothing innately magical about the moon,” Gakushuu explains. “It’s a hunk of rock. But the moon affects tides, which in turn affects water folk. It doesn’t cause werewolves to change - it’s a biological trait for them, they’ll change regardless. It's just a constant they've evolved to regulate about. Magic is about…” he draws a circle in the air, “completion. Rings. Cycles. The cycle of life, of elements… the water cycle, if that counts. It just… is.”

“Something that makes life go on,” Karma surmises.

Gakushuu smiles at him. “Yes.”

“I was talking to Allie the other day,” Karma says.

“At midnight?” Gakushuu says.

“I mean, yeah,” Karma says.

“What did she say?”

“I can grow, age, die if I want to,” Karma says. “It’d take a bit - a lot - of magic assist but… it’s possible.” He’s slowly folding the batter. “When I was… when I just turned, I was scared. I thought I’d stay the same age forever. There’s nothing worth to be done if your deadline is never.”

He looks up at Gakushuu, who's gazing at him silently. “It’s comforting to know there’s an end to anything. That I haven’t been cut out of the cycle… of how things are supposed to go.”

“There’s no end to a cycle, silly,” Gakushuu says softly. 

“If it starts somewhere, it has to end somewhere,” Karma says. “One day… everything is going to cease to exist.”

“Are you saying we let the moon go?”

“It’s not a natural end to things,” Karma says. “Neither will mine be. But it is an end. Things will find a way.”

Gakushuu walks and leans over at the windowsill. He looks up into the sky. “Do you miss him?”

“Who?”

“Your teacher.”

Karma looks down in his mixing bowl. “Yeah.”

“I think he’s worth remembering,” Gakushuu says. “He left his mark.”

Karma smiles. “You could probably have taken him down easy.” Koro-sensei’s big weakness was water, after all.

“But then you wouldn’t have all that character development.”

“Yeah, and you were the perfect antagonist for getting us all pissed and motivated,” Karma says. “Probably wouldn’t have had the same effect if you were in the same class as us.”

Gakushuu lets out a bark of laughter. Then he turns to look outside again. “You think the fey would fix the moon?”

“They don’t have an incentive to, right? It doesn’t affect them.”

“They’ve known to be… uncharacteristically generous from time to time.”

“Maybe if the unmitigated panic spreads, they’ll come out and snap their fingers just to get everyone to shut up.”

Gakushuu huffs out a soft laugh. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and find the right fairy ring.”

The cookies are in the oven. The weather is colder now. They’re edging into autumn. It’s been a rainy summer but the air dries by late afternoon, and aside from that congregation a week back the River girls had - outside water, for Karma’s benefit, they’ve not surfaced since. 

.....

Allie takes Karma to see the summer sprites pass Japan to move further down south - they’re commonly mistaken as fireflies. 

“They’ll probably be lost without the moon,” she says.

“Can’t stars be used for navigation as well?” Karma asks.

“Sure,” Alesha says. “It’d take a while for humans, but we’ll manage. Animals, on the other hand, may not. It’s just instinct. It’d be a long time until evolution snaps their homing system back in place.”

“Do you think there’s the chance of the fey fixing the moon?”

“Kid, if they had intention, they could’ve intervened any time in the past two years. Now we can just hope one of them gets bored.” 

“Any way to pick out changelings?”

She snorts. “A changeling with no grasp on power will just speed up the process and send the rest of the moon up into itty bitty space dust.”

“I have a friend with purple eyes.”

Alesha looks marginally more interested. “You think he’s changeling? Any non-human things, magical inclinations?”

“Uh, he’s a water nymph?”

“ _ He _ ?”

“He got… turned.”

“Nope,” Allie says. “Fey are territorial. Changeling or no, they’ll never have any of their ‘pure’,” she makes quotations with her fingers, “magic tainted with bits of anything else.”

“Sad,” Karma says.

Then Alesha turns to him again. “You have a water nymph friend? How’d that happen?”

"He's my classmate in school," Karma tells her. "He came up to me one day and asked me if I sparkle in the sun."

Alesha lets out a bark of laughter. "What did you say?" 

"No, obviously! I knew he was off. He didn't have… blood. I spent a really long time trying to figure out what he was. I accused him of being a siren and a mermaid."

"Mermaids don't exist." 

"Well I know that now," Karma says. "Sirens can be considered a separate race on a technicality and that technicality is that I know the damn River girls can't sing."

"Look, see there!” Alesha says abruptly. She gets to her feet and points into the distance.”See that?”

“What?”

“A Moonray. It’s hunting the sprites.”

“Oh. Oh! Wow.”

"We might never see one again if the moon goes."

“I think I’ll miss the moon,” Karma admits, “if it was really gone.”

“So would I,” Alesha says wistfully. The two continue gazing up in the sky.

-....

“The ocean?” Karma says. “That’s out of the blue.” He snickers. “The blue, hehe-”

Gakushuu cracks a small smile. “Yeah. But Kalasi misses the ocean, and if the moon is really going to go, she wants to go back to the tides again before it does.”

“Aww,” Karma says. “I’ll hold the fort down while you’re gone.”

“It’s just for the weekend,” Gakushuu says. “I told my dad I’m staying over with you. Just yell at him if he calls. I’ve never been to the ocean - not with the river girls, at least.”

“Thanks for the clarification,” Karma says. “I thought you were going to tell me your father has never brought you out to the beach. Although come to think of it, it doesn’t sound like something he would do.”

“It isn’t,” Gakushuu says, tilting his head. “But he used to take me on business trips, and more often than not they took place at upper class beach resorts. Being an attractive successful single father gave him a lot of points in the eyes of rich women who were sick of their moochy CEO husbands with three affairs.”

“Yeouch.”

“It helped that I was an unnaturally well behaved child,” Gakushuu shrugs with a shoulder. “Comes with the trauma.”

“Bring me back a souvenir,” Karma says.

“Will do,” Gakushuu says.

Gakushuu’s leaves after school on Friday. Karma waves by the riverbank until he’s sure they’re gone, then feels a little like a lady from 1943 seeing her husband off at the docks. Gakuho doesn't call, but he does text to check in at night. Gakushuu left his phone with Karma, because waterproof didn’t mean underwater travel for 2 days straight. He returns late afternoon on Sunday, looking more relaxed than he has ever been in a long time. 

“I got you a present,” he says, hauling an enormous black bag onto Karma’s kitchen counter. It smells like the ocean.

“What is it?” Karma’s starting to prepare dinner. He cracks in two more eggs to double the portion.

“It’s a human skull from the Chinese army from back when China was in the Ming dynasty in the 14th century,” Gakushuu says almost proudly. 

Karma pauses and slowly turns around. “Seriously?”

“No,” Gakushuu says. “I don’t actually know how old it is. Or if it’s chinese. Or if it’s actually human.”

Karma blinks. “Okay. Thank you.”

Gakushuu digs in the bag and pulls out a… true to his word, a skull. Dear fucking god, Gakushuu. 

It looks clean, thankfully, and he’s right - the skull looks human, sure, but it also has upper fangs that extend past its lower jaw, so Karma wouldn’t bet on it.

“Very nice,” Karma says, and Gakushuu gives him a sharp, pleased grin. 

“I also got you a Moonfish,” Gakushuu says, and to Karma’s horror he pulls out a hugeass fucking fish from the bag and slaps it onto the counter. “Not to be confused with the Moonfin Fish, which are fish that are born under the light of the full moon by the rays that shine into water and die once the night is over, which would have been named Moonfish instead if there wasn’t already an actual species of fish called the Moonfish.”

Karma stares.

“They’re apparently very delicious. I’ve tried and it’s not too spectacular, but Ikeda says it has to be cooked.”

“Um,” Karma says, “thanks. Can you cut that up for the freezer? Because that -” the fish in question is as big as Gakushuu, holy shit “- is not fitting.”

“Kay,” Gakushuu says, and humming pleasantly to himself he takes one of Karma’s large kitchen knives. Karma mourns it a little - it won’t be the same after.

“So how was the ocean?” Karma asks.

“Pretty nice,” Gakushuu says. He begins hacking away at the fish. Karma reaches over the sink to open the window. He’s getting used to the smell of water with Gakushuu around… but that’s just too much fish.

“Karms? I don’t think there’s space in your fridge.”

(“You ever watch the Little Mermaid? The Disney one?” Ikeda says one day. Out of all the nymphs, he’s the most amicable to Karma - excluding Gakushuu, of course. It makes sense. 

“Uh, yeah,” Karma says. 

Ikeda looks left and right shiftily, almost like he’s making sure no one is around. Gakushuu’s left to stretch his legs, and he’s swimming up the channel with Co’ora. “Let me give you a piece of advice,” Ikeda says, leaning forward. “You know how in the Little Mermaid, Ariel has a hoarding problem?”

“She does?” Karma says. “It’s been years since I saw the movie.”

“Well, she does,” Ikeda says, waving a hand. “She wants to see the human world, so she collects things. And she gets pissy when she can’t.” He pauses. “That’s what Gakushuu is like.”

“What?” Karma furrows a brow. “He gets pissy? Yeah, I knew that.”

“No, he likes things,” Ikeda says. “You two are friends and it’d only be a while before he starts giving his, ah, weird knick knacks to you. Please don’t refuse them. Put them in a junk drawer if you need to.”

“Um,” Karma says.

“He’ll get pouty and pissy. It’s a miserable experience,” Ikeda says.

“How long ago did he start, uh, doing that?”

“I don’t know. When he first came? He was interested in pretty much, well, everything. He threw fits at me when I tried to convince him to throw trash out, so I never touched it again.”

Karma stares at him. “Have you considered it’s because Gakushuu was, well, ten at the time?”

“Hm,” Ikeda thinks for a moment. “Nah. He’s still a child.”)

There’s about half a fish left slopping on the floor. Karma makes a face at it. He imagines Gakushuu dragging a non-human skull and the fish up on shore, and then he imagines Ikeda laughing at Karma’s impending fate.

“It’s a lot of fish,” Karma says. “Uh, honestly, it’d probably go bad before I can finish it. Do you want to give the rest to the river girls?”

“Okay,” Gakushuu says, happily pliant. He zips the fish back up in the bag. There’s a red stain on Karma’s kitchen tiles. 

Up in Karma’s “treasure chest” in his room, there’s a trilobite fossil, half a rusted tin whistle with encrusted barnacles growing on it, a fist-sized pearl that might actually be worth a fortune if Karma could sell it without fear of Gakushuu making him his next meal, and a dried cod which is no different from any dried cod purchased from the market except for the sole fact that it was Gakushuu’s dried cod. And now he had a skull.

“See you,” Gakushuu says, bag slung over his shoulder. 

“I’m making dinner,” Karma says.

Gakushuu perks up. “With the Moonfish?”

Karma looks to his right, where he has a perfectly normal sized sea bass, gutted and ready to go. “Not today?”

“Aww,” Gakushuu says.

“Go to the river," Karma shoos. "Hurry back.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I see you have all noticed my increase in chapter count. I also see that you all noticed me typing "Karms" in place of "Karma" in the previous chapter and I would like to say - nope, that's not a typo ;) There's no cute nicknames that can come from "Akabane" :(

**\--...**

Ria yawns. She has two rows of terrifying canines that are as large as Karma’s fangs. He’s a little jealous. She’d just gotten back from a trip to the countryside with her family, and she’s feeling relaxed.

The moon serves as nothing except for a temporal rhythm for transformations. The process in itself is biological and would happen regardless of the presence of the moon. Gakushuu once compared it to mensuration, and Ria slapped him before agreeing. 

Magical folk living in urban areas have to make adjustments to their ancestral lifestyle. Ria and her family take the equivalent of werewolf birth control ( _moon control_ , Gakushuu hastily corrects, as Ria slashes him in the arm with her claws. They phase through his skin like water.) and venture out to a villa they co-own in a timeshare, on the outskirts of the city every three months.

“It’s just going to be weird without the moon,” she says, legs crossed under her. “I’m so used to seeing it, you know? It may not be the on and off switch but it’s still part of culture, of tradition.”

”They’re thinking of making a replacement moon,” Gakushuu says. He has his phone in his hands.

They conversed with Ritsu yesterday. There’s talk about sending a large enough satellite to hang in the night sky. It won’t be enough to replicate gravitational forces and bring the tides back the way they were, but it might be able to reflect light to mimic the moon. (The concerns are earth-natural and not supernatural based, of course.) Will animals be able to find their way? 

Ria sags. “It won’t feel the same.”

The door opens. It’s Taka, balancing a bag over his head with an arm which is doing little to keep him dry. Behind him, the outside world is a fuzzy mist. The patter of rain on the windowsill is lethargic.

Gakushuu looks amused. He waves a hand and then Taka is dry. 

“The monsoon isn’t supposed to be here this early,” Taka complains.

“It’s not,” Gakushuu agrees. He heads over to the door, but instead of shutting it, he sticks his hand out. Pulls it back in, and shakes it dry. “(Intelligible) is distressed. About the moon.”

“Maybe she’s going to rain the fey out,” Taka says. 

“I brought you dried carragrass,” Ria says to Taka. “Well, it’s damp carragrass now.” 

“Thanks. I know there are some covens actually attempting to contact the fey.”

“Is it working?”

“Of course not.”

“Maybe Gakushuu can try.”

“I told you, I’m not half-fey.”

“Maybe you could infiltrate them. I bet they’ll believe you.”

Gakushuu rolls his eyes. “If we manage to find them, I’ll pretend to infiltrate them and see if it works. If I get smited or dragged into fey land and am never to return, it’s on you.”

Karma laughs. “I bet they’ll be sick of you and kick you out on their own accord.”

“I’ll turn you into skewered bat.”

**\---..**

Karma still keeps a largely diurnal schedule, because he has real life to keep up with. Alesha, as far as he knows, prefers nocturnal, and she tells him he’ll see the beauty in it one day. 

But it’s not like Karma doesn't appreciate the night. It’s never black - it’s always blues and reds and purples and greens and patterned with twinkling lights that hold the stories of millenia. It’s the crescent moon hanging on almost wistfully, it’s edges already crumbling away.

Sometimes, Gakushuu looks almost older than he is; his voice sounds like crashing waves against a rock cliff wall, there’s something in him that’s tied to something of the ancients, rooted in life older than magic itself,

but under the night sky he looks impossibly young, his hair dusted silver. The water on his face casts a funny reflection; like he has stars for freckles over his cheeks, that are flushed a little pink.

There are less light posts by the river, and further downstream the water curves away from the city. Karma hasn’t been afraid of the dark; or water, since he was a child. Now that he can defend himself, he’s ever more terrified, because he knows - or rather doesn’t know - what the world holds. 

He’s waist-deep in the water. 

(“Mermaids aren’t real.”

“Yeah, because a half-human half-fish is too unrealistic but a half-lion, half-eagle isn’t?”

“I have no idea if griffins are real,” Ikeda muses. “That’s out of my area of expertise. Maybe you should ask Gakushuu.”

Karma scowls at his notepad. “He doesn’t know, either. I don’t know any air-inclined magical folk.” 

“Shame,” Ikeda says. “Do let me know if you find out whether griffins are real.”

“Sure,” Karma says, distracted. He flips through his notepad, and - “oh! Did I tell you? I accused Gakushuu of being a siren. Back when I was guessing.”

Ikeda lets out a bark of laughter. “Did you?”

“I heard him sing,” Karma says.

“He could be,” Ikeda agrees. “Although sirens are not just nymphs who can sing. There’s magic in their song, for enchantment and hypnosis.”

“Have you ever met one?”

“Oh, yes. They absolutely hated me. They would probably have killed me, if not for that I was already dead.”

“Why?”

Ikeda shrugs. “Because I’m male. Because I can’t sing. Because I didn’t knock. Many possible reasons, really. Maybe even because I accidentally screamed - holy shit they’re so ugly - because they are, you don’t need good looks when you have the power of hypnosis, after all. Or maybe because I accidentally kicked over someone’s hoard and messed up their intricately hideous arrangement - you know, maybe Gakushuu is a siren after all?.”)

Maybe, Karma thinks.

He’s in the middle of the stream, head tilted back towards the sky, eyes closed. He’s wearing a shirt, but he might as well not be. Karma wades over, then stops short when something brushes his foot.

“Hi,” Karma says, slowly. It’s there again, something just grazing his leg. It doesn’t feel like one of the girls (or Ikeda). The water is still.

Gakushuu’s (eyes still closed) lashes flutter, and he lets out a breathy laugh. “Leave him alone,” he says to nothing in particular. 

Karma and Gakushuu rarely spend full moons alone. They had a few months, slowly drinking in the light, high on their newfound companionship. Then Gakushuu brings him to meet the river girls, and then they make acquaintances with Ria and Taka, and then Karma meets Alesha-

It’s a lot, going on. He’s finding out too much too fast, and now the moon is going to go before he gets to enjoy it.

“See, there?” Gakushuu whispers, sliding up next to him. “The Moonfin.”

Karma feels breathless. “Gorgeous.”

“You’re not looking.”

“Mhm.”

“Idiot,” Gakushuu murmurs. He dips back and disappears underwater. 

Ghostly pale fish that flicker with water ripples dot up, peppering the lake with it’s own brand of fireflies. The luminescence reveals dark shapes darting underwater, too many and too large and too small to be Gakushuu. They swim past him, closer than necessary, but they’re probably just curious.

Gakushuu pops up again. He has a moonfin in his hands. It looks like a wriggling flat of mist, but feels solid in Karma’s hands. Gakushuu looks up at him with twinkling eyes.

“Dinner tomorrow,” Karma says. 

“You’re the best,” Gakushuu tells him, and pulls him closer.

**\----.**

By mid-winter, the first large chunk of moon cracks and breaks away. 

Ritsu tells them it's unlikely that the piece of moon would come back to Earth. It goes off careening into space, but it would be a while before it disappears from sight. It may be travelling thousands of miles every blink but there's nothing in between to block the view. 

With that comes the first snowfall of the season. Gakushuu looks melancholy, head pillowed in his arms by the windowsill. Karma goes up next to him, and Gakushuu curls up under his chin.

“‘S quiet,” Gakushuu murmurs. 

There’s a commotion from the kitchen. It’s Gakuho, who walks out and stops short at the sight of them, looking almost hesitant.

Gakushuu lifts his head. “The moon’s breaking up.”

“A-ah,” Gakuho says. “I’m sorry.”

They watch him go up the stairs.

“I think he knows,” Gakushuu says abruptly. “I - I’m not very good at hiding things from him.” Pauses. “You come over too often.”

Karma’s lips curl. “Has he said anything to you?”

Gakushuu doesn’t answer. “Let’s go out,” he says instead.

Karma feels a chill in his bones. It’s not supposed to be cold enough for snow, and the air is still warm enough that ice turns to slurry on the pavement. “Mother is sad,” Gakushuu says, catching a half-melted snowflake on his nose. The scarf his father bought him is wrapped around his neck. “She feels it gone.”

“Do you?” Karma asks.

“Not really,” Gakushuu admits. “I’m not old - attuned - enough to really tell the difference.” He looks up. “I did feel it when 60% of the moon was blown up. It just felt… empty. Like… if there was a song on the radio in the background, and someone suddenly shut it off.”

They’re walking quietly, hand in hand. Gakushuu runs warmer than Karma.

“What happens when you die?” Karma asks. Winces.

Gakushuu answers him, before Karma can tell him he doesn’t have to. “I become part of the water cycle,” he says. 

“Oh,” Karma says. 

“It’s kind of cathartic to think about,” Gakushuu says. “Besides. All cycles spiral to an end, don’t they?”

“Nihilism in magical folk is dangerous,” Karma says. Especially with longevity and immortality, they need to live. It’s odd to think that if Karma dies, it would have to be a murder or a suicide.

Gakushuu laughs light and airy. “It’s breaking,” he says, pointing up at the sky. The piece of moon grows ever infinitesimally further apart from them. 

“I can’t wait to see it happen to Earth,” he says. “I’ll see it. I won’t be _me_ , but... I’ll be here.” 

Karma won’t be there. The planet would have been inhabitable for millennia then, magic or no. “It’d be beautiful.”

Gakushuu’s still gazing at the moon. “It is.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Drumroll*
> 
> I started this fic early May and I updated in quick succession, and I'm publishing the final chapter 3 whole months later. Oh dear HAHA I know it was a long wait, but I hope it's. Worth it?
> 
> I recently finished my flagship fic [Kunugigaoka Knows](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22773166) (43 whole chapters! I cannot believe it!) quite recently, and I'm still emotionally overwhelmed from that. I finished this chapter today! It was super fun to write, and I hope I didn't lose the tone from the first 3 with how much time has passed, honestly.

**.---- -----**

“-So I had the carp in my hands, that thing still thrashing around. It’s so slimy I almost lost my grip. The scales were coming off - fish scales come off surprisingly easy, you know? Considering they’re supposed to be grown into the skin. You take a fish, brush it lightly with your hand, and fish scales are there.”

“And then you bit it.”

“And then I bit it,” Gakushuu says, grimacing. “It’s stomach _exploded_ , blood and guts everywhere. Its scales were digging into my mouth, it’s fin slashed the inside of my cheek, it was still _squirming_. God, i remember how gross it was.”

“I bit Nagisa.”

“Oh?”

“I asked him to meet up with me a day later. I was so confused and… scared. I googled it. I didn’t know if it was real or not, I tried to take my pulse, I couldn’t tell which were fansites formatted realistically and which were real, or if there were even any real - well, I needed to ground myself. Someone to slap me in the head and tell me that I was just - that my mind was running. I called Nagisa, asked him to meet me.”

“We had lunch at a fast food place. He could tell I wasn’t right, definitely, he’s perceptive like that, but I didn’t know how to broach the subject. Not in public anyways. We’re walking back and - you know how all the physical training in 3-E made us all bulk up? Funny thing, there was a vein in his forearm - stop laughing! - and I can’t explain it - shut up! You ate a raw carp! - I grabbed his arm and bit it. I tore a bit of skin, not enough to actually break the vein. He elbowed me in the nose and smashed my head into the floor.”

“Damn.”

“Yeah! He apologized. He thought I was just being weird, you know, as I do. He reacted on instinct.”

“What kind of instincts? Do people try to bite him often? Except you.”

“Ha-ha, it was just once, mind you. I blurted it out then. _Nagisa, I think I’m a vampire._ He thought he gave me a concussion.”

**.---- .----**

“You know,” Gakushuu says, raking a hand through Nagisa’s hair. “Blue is a very _magical_ color.” He starts braiding it, humming. 

“I’m sorry?” Nagisa squeaks.

“It’s not naturally occurring in humans, that’s for sure,” Gakushuu says. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there was something else in your ancestral line. Although it’s probably too far off to matter.”

Nagisa touches his hair lightly. “It came from my mother.”

“Oh!” Gakushuu looks interested. “You must be the first boy in their lineage. Might explain why you don’t look much like one - no offence.” He perks up. “We might be distant cousins.”

Nagisa’s eyes widen. “Really?”

Gakushuu nods. “Have you ever wanted to drown?”  
“Um,” Nagisa says. “Can’t say I have particularly wanted to?”

“Oh, Karma told me about that,” Gakushuu says. “What’s-his-name. Reaper.” He appraises Nagisa. “You might have survived. Might not… but you might have." Pauses. "Probably not."

"Oh," Nagisa says, awkwardly, like he always is when confronted with something he doesn't quite understand. "I'll keep that in mind." 

"Wait." Something clicks in Karma's mind - or the opposite, in fact, because he's now more confused. "You guys can have babies?" 

Nagisa turns red. Gakushuu's gaze snaps to Karma, and he seems to be considering the pros and cons of answering the question, before he sits back on his haunches. "Yes," Gakushuu says, mildly perturbed. "Supernatural folk can indeed have children." 

"How the hell does that work?" 

Gakushuu sniffs, crossing his arms. "Magic."

Which is the default answer Gakushuu gives when he doesn't want to admit he has no idea what the science behind the phenomenon is. 

Karma pats his stomach and wonders aloud, "Do you think I can have babies?" 

Nagisa's gaze follows that movement, his eyes wide with horror. 

Karma catches it. "I'm still a guy," he says quickly. "I don't know why I did that."

Gakushuu snorts. “You can certainly try.”

Nagisa opens his mouth, and closes it.

Gakushuu’s finished braiding Nagisa’s hair by then. He had his hair cropped short a year ago, but it’s in-between a haircut now, and long enough for Gakushuu to be able to twist something out of it. Karma thinks it might be a nymph thing - the hair, that is. Karma’s used to the river girls fussing over his. Red is a very interesting colour. Gakushuu likes playing with his hair, too, even though he pretend that he doesn’t.

**.---- ..---**

So winter settles over Japan like a quiet blanket, frost dusts on the sleeping trees, and the river water goes still.

Karma’s in layers and bundles as he sits by a tree near the waters’ edge, shivering a little. Dead or not, Karma still gets cold like everyone else, and he does fall folly to the laws of thermodynamics. He actually gets colder easier, considering he doesn’t quite have, well, a functioning circulatory system to make sure his body is warm and toast. He’s an endotherm now. He won’t die from frostbite or any such chill related ailments, but it naturally requires way more energy to get things done in an environment one is not suited for. 

It’s way more comfortable to be warmer, anyways. 

Gakushuu pops out of the water, hair dripping wet and face flushed. He bounds over to Karma - by which time he’s dry - and unrepentantly wriggles under Karma’s thick outerlayers.

Karma squawks. “Ga-ku-shuu!” And wraps his arms around him to cover him in the coat, and shivers again. “You are freezing!”

Gakushuu buries his face in the fluff of Karma’s collar. “You’re warm,” he mumbles. It comes out muffled. 

Karma sighs. 

Gakushuu has it better. He likes it best when the weather is colder - although a good temperature for him probably means air-conditioning and not stepping out of the icy river water into zero degrees celsius, but that’s his own damn fault, really. They could have been in a heated room right now in Karma’s house, or something, but no, Gakushuu wanted to go for a swim and Karma’s the idiot that followed him.

The outermost layer Karma has on is Gakushuu’s, but he’s not too inclined to give it up yet. The elder Asano has expensive taste in fashion - it’s vintage fur, the softest thing Karma has ever run his hands across. He should keep it because Gakushuu clearly doesn’t know how to appreciate it. Karma had barely caught it from touching snow from when Gakushuu haphazardly flung it aside in haste to get into the water.

Karma needs it more. Really. Gakushuu has no problems with the cold. 

“Put this on, stupid,” Karma says, shrugging the coat off - he mourns it already - and squeezing Gakushuu into it like a child. They both slide down the tree and Gakushuu curls up onto Karma’s lap. He’s already adjusting; he feels warmer than Karma now. A little heating pad.

“How’s, uh, great grandmother water spirit nymph overlord doing?” Karma asks.

“She’s sad,” Gakushuu says. “We can’t see it from here, but smaller pieces of the moon are already breaking away. She thinks they’ll all be gone by March.”

**.---- ...--**

“I saw a satyr yesterday,” Ria offers, as she bites into an apple slice, and then reaches for another. “He was on vacation. He’s from the more forestry areas up in Northern Europe. I’m going to go there one day, it sounds great. He has no idea if unicorns are real.”

She’d just returned from a trip to the countryside down south. It’s not snowing there, but the weather is just as cold.

“What an odd time to go on vacation,” Taka says.

“He says that most people there travelled down south.” Another apple. “Mama water is sad, so temperatures are dipping lower than ever.”

“Scientists are trying to explain the phenomenon of the sudden record lows with the loss of the moon, something about altering the water cycle,” Gakushuu says. “They’re technically not wrong.” 

“This is mink,” Taka says, in awe, brushing Gakushuu’s fur coat. “And it’s… two hundred years old?”

“My father got it,” Gakushuu says, burying his tinted pink cheeks in it’s enormous sleeves. “He’s weird about me being cold.”

“Like, emotionally?”

“Yes, Taka, his father got him a physical, tangible fur coat to make up for their intangible, emotional distance- wait, that actually makes sense.”

**.---- ....-**

Winter melts away into the chilliest spring on record, and the largest piece of the moon to break away yet goes flying into outer space.

Albuquerque, New Mexico, America; Barcelona, Spain; Angoche, Mozambique and Krong Kaeb, Cambodia are the four cities that get hit by stray pieces of the moon. Fragments land in rivers, lakes, oceans. Gakushuu finds one. It’s palm-sized, grey and dull, it does not have the word “moon” written on it, and looks just like a normal earth-bound rock. When Karma holds it in his palm and brings it up to his chest, he cries, for the first time in a long time.

He’d cried when Koro-sensei died. He hadn’t known why. There was something strange about it, his perception of mortality - 3-E had faced unspeakable horrors, near-death experiences. Each time Karma is unfazed, how could he possibly be? He’d been a vampire for barely months, then, but it’s strange how quickly humanity slips through your fingers.

He doesn’t feel warmth in his fingers and he doesn’t hear his heart pound in his ears when he runs. He jumps off the cliff because he knows he will get back up again if his back hits the ground. He doesn’t feel his heart jump out of his throat like the terror in his classmates eyes when they find out their drinks are poison, and he does not shiver when he watches Grip (the assassin) crush concrete with his fingers.

It’s so cruel, how fast that death takes away from Karma what he’d taken for granted in life. Sometimes he still doesn’t know how Gakushuu does it, swimming in circles like that around his mortality. He’s been here longer, though, so maybe it’s something Karma has yet to get used to.

Maybe he’d been desensitized to death and _his_ death, but not his friends’. He still cared when 3-E risked their life through the year. He would have stepped in should anything irreversible happen, at risk of giving himself up. He’d _wished_ he had been the one, instead of Kayano, to jump into the fight against Reaper 2.0 that night.

When Koro-sensei dies, Karma cries because he loved Koro-sensei. But he cries because he thinks this is the most beautiful thing that he will ever see. Fighting for their life, the last breath someone takes, the sobering finality of it all - Karma will never get that.

What do you even go on for, as an immortal? Karma’s still a kid. He should have had his whole life ahead of him. What will he do when he finally graduates college, or lands his dream job, or travels the world? What’s next, forever? 

And maybe that’s why he doesn’t mind seeing the moon go. No one had expected to see the moon go. But it’s reassuring, comforting. Nothing really does last forever.

**.---- .....**

(“I have slept,” Kalasi says, “for three hundred years. Do you know that?”

Her accent is thick and unplaceable. She has her head thrown back, blinking up at the night sky. It’s the first few dewy days of spring, the air is breezy and the Girls have traced a trail of river out into the field. Kalasi hasn’t ventured far from the riverbank, but she’s kicking her feet into the grass, splashing water everywhere. Further out into the open air, Ikeda and Gakshuu are playing a game of catch.

“Oh,” Karma says. “No, I haven’t.”

Kalasi must be in a careless mood today. A school of tiny fish Karma doesn’t know the name of swims around the pool by her feet. “I have,” she says. “I sleep for three hundred years, and I wake up and the water is turning red. Do you know why my water is red?”

Karma shakes his head.

“Blood,” she says, sharply. “Humans. They don’t understand.” And her hand shoots up, one finger jutting up to the sky. “Do you see?”

Karma shakes his head. He does not like to look up when he’s further from the city lights. There are too many stars.

“I listened to them give the stars names,” she says, and oh! “The silly things they name them. They name them stories! And nobody will tell those stories. They want their names to live forever and they kill the people who know these names. So many different names! The one they call Bear was called Eye, and before it was Eye it was Ocean Dweller - Siren! And before it was Siren it was called Forest. And many many years later nobody will remember it was called Bear, and then they will call it something else.”

“O-oh,” Karma says.

“You are so young,” Kalasi says to Karma, and - in an uncharacteristic gesture - pats him on the head almost affectionately. And then she turns away, looking back up at the stars, and the conversation is over.)

**.---- -....**

In springtime, the muted colours of winter brighten up again. There are cherry blossoms hanging over roadside stalls with strawberry cartons, and Karma wears something pink. 

It’s starting too warm out for mink, but Gakushuu keeps wearing his around anyways, because he can thermoregulate and because Karma thinks Gakushuu is growing fond of it.

It’s a nice, tan-ish coat that looks almost a little too big for Gakushuu, because Gakuhou is taller than he is. 

“Hey,” Karma says. “I have a question. Can you grow taller?”

Gakushuu shoots him a sharp look.

“Like, with water,” Karma says.

“Not this time, no,” Gakushuu says. “Maybe in another life.”

“Oh,” Karma says. “Cool.”

Gakushuu huffs a little laugh. “I can, technically. With magic. But it is messy.”

“Messy like you might lose a limb, or messy like you’ll get water everywhere?”

“Hm. A bit of both?”

There’s a storefront with bright oranges and red strawberries and fat blueberries and Karma tugs Gakushuu towards it. Karma is a farmer’s market kid now, because if he is going to live forever he will support sustainable consumption and small businesses. They’re with armfuls of reusable bags when they run into Kay. 

“Hey, guys!” She says. “Hey, Asano. Nice… coat.”

She’s a selkie. Or at least her mother was. Her skin is draped over her shoulders with a fluffy collar.

Contrary to popular belief (or rather, Karma’s initial beliefs,) just because supernaturals were from the same biome, doesn’t mean they’ll get along. The Sirens and the Nymphs (with the exception of poor Ikeda) were tolerable towards each other, but they were more cousins. Selkies were the essential equivalent of aquatic lycantropes , although they didn’t start off from the same thread - convergent evolution, if you will, completely unrelated species evolve to be the same way due to external circumstances. Ergo, fish and mammals being from wildly different genealogies, but dolphins and sharks being practically the same thing.

(Because of that, though, Kay does not have the same instinctual connection to the water and the moon because there’s really nothing that links her all the way back to Nymph Mother. She’s in chipper spirits.)

Kay adores Gakushuu. She’s a water-dweller by birth, and she adored having the equivalent of a little sibling to poke around with.

And because of that, Ikeda and the River Girls absolutely abhor Kay. They wouldn’t take her skin, of course not, but they would spit and hiss at her when she came by to flip them the bird.

Yeah. Things were strange. 

Kay talks their ear into a cafe - she’s in college now, two years deep into a bachelor’s in marketing. She’s going to move to Colorado after she graduates, because she has family there. She passes on a bundle of freshly picked mint to Gakushuu and chats them all the way back to her bus stop. 

**.---- --...**

The summer sprites migrate back up north in mid-spring, and this time Karma brings Gakushuu to watch them. They twinkle like prairie dust. 

Karma watches as Gakushuu slips silently into the water, and he loses sight of him. Not really, because Karma thinks he can imagine an outline of a shape moving so quietly the water’s flow doesn’t even change. He attributes it more to his eyesight, or maybe he’d just learnt to recognize Gakushuu now.

The shape sits still, slowly, slowly, as the sprites glimmer and glisten and pass overhead. Then water shoots up and then crashes back down.

“I can’t believe you drowned some sprites.”

“I just wanted to see what they looked like,” Gakushuu says. He pouts, with large fake eyes. 

“You wanted to see what they taste like, you mean,” Karma says.

Gakushuu pops them (a small handful) into his mouth, like popcorn. He hands Karma a dried sprite and Karma does too. It’s crunchy.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Gakushuu says. “It’s up to us to keep the sprite population in check. The moon’s not strong enough for Moonrays anymore.”  
Gakushuu is right. The pieces of the moon have drifted apart now, they’re no longer recognizable as a crescent. Ritsu says it’s likely that what’s left of the moon would join the Earth’s orbit. What has gone has already gone.

The piece of the moon Gakushuu has give him is on Karma’s nightstand. Karma thinks it glows, sometimes, like it’s reflecting light from the sun as a pseudo-moon. It’s kind of cute. There’s nothing supernatural about it, just like there’s nothing supernatural about the moon - it’s just a hunk of rock which has been incredibly punctual for millions of millions of years, and whoever who created magic decided to set the time with the moon as the base.

Just like how humans technically used the sun to keep track. One day, one night. Mathematicians chose base 10. Things were because of other things.

You know. Cycles.

**.---- ---..**

Eventually they do send a satellite to mimic an artificial moon. Large, round, painted. Karma watches it take off on the news and then moves to his balcony and watches it settle in the sky.

He gets a phone call from Gakushuu, and he sets it on speaker on his railing. Gakushuu’s voice is quiet, and a little faraway.

“-feels like nothing,” Gakushuu is saying. Karma turns the volume up. 

“-going to work the same way, doesn’t it?” Oh, it’s Gakuhou. “It still serves the same temporal functions.”

“Sure,” Gakushuu says. “But it’s not up to me to- oh, Karma, hi.”

Gakuhou’s distant voice calls out, “hello, Akabane.”

“Hey,” Karma says. “How is it going?” He really doesn’t know if Gakuhou knows - and if he does, how much he knows. Gakushuu’s never outright said anything to him. Karma imagines it’d be hard to. His own parents don’t know he’s dead, and if Karma has his way, they’ll never find out.

“Does this feel like a full moon?” Karma says.

Gakushuu laughs a little. “I was just telling my father that. It’s not up to me to decide. I don’t feel anything with regards to the moon itself. A puddle doesn’t have a tidal system. I’m attuned to (intelligible), who’s in turn attuned to the tides, and consequently the moon. If (intelligible) decides the moon isn’t working for her, then it’s not working for me, either.”

Karma wonders what Gakuhou is making of their conversation. Maybe he thinks they’re LARPing. Or maybe he thinks they’re on drugs.

Maybe he is secretly a fey, and he’s been just gaming them the whole time.

“-dad,” Gakushuu chides. “I’m not cold.”

Karma cracks a smile.

There’s some muffled dialogue, and then, “Karms? Wanna come over?”

“Now?” Karma looks up. The moon blinks back at him. It feels odd, knowing that the moon is in his pocket and the new one hangs in the sky above him.

There’s a strange reassurance in what Gakushuu says, that Mother Nymph doesn’t accept this new moon. Maybe Karma is selfish, but he likes the reminder that the old moon is gone. But he likes a new moon, too, because it would truly be a hassle without one, in all things practical, or there would be no more moonlight for Karma to be able to walk to the river on the path without streetlights. 

What did Gakushuu say? It’s a cycle. It will continue to be a cycle. But it’s also a new start, to one.

“Sure,” Karma says. 

**.---- ----.**

And then the seasons change and it’s summer, again, three whole years after the moon blew up. They’re second year students in high school now, there’s a brand new moon in the sky, and Karma turns seventeen. 

“I’m going to learn to pronounce all the River Girl’s names this year,” Karma says. “And how to knit.”

“Oh?” Gakushuu says. 

“Yes,” Karma says. “I’m thinking of planting some basil.”

“You’re going to be a farmer now?” Gakushuu says. “Are you going to move to the countryside?”

“I’m going to push for environmental sustainability when I’m a bureaucrat,” Karma says. “Your fingers are cold. How are they still cold when it’s so hot out?”

“Would you rather they be warm?”

“Ow, okay, no. Fine.”

Gakushuu looks up at the sky. “I think it’d be a dry summer this year.”

“Yeah?” Karma says. “Perfect for my basil.”

Gakushuu smiles at him. His eyes glitter, and his hair is bright. “You should cook it. With fish.”

“Will you catch me some fresh salmon?”

“They’ll swim back upriver in Autumn.”

“Plenty of time for my basil to grow.”

“I’ll be laughing at you if it turns out to be shitty basil.”

“You better hope they turn out great or you’ll be eating all of it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, Nagisa. My dear.  
> I don't know what Gakuhou knows, okay? I'm willing to leave it an unanswered question.  
> Kay debuts in the very end of the first fic in this little mismatched series, Jettison! She's a friend. 
> 
> I'm in such a mood for writing fics that make me go sighhhh at the end. You know?

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Tidal Walk [PODFIC]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24303952) by [alstroemeria_thoughts (aurantiaca)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurantiaca/pseuds/alstroemeria_thoughts)




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